This book interrogates standard narratives about national identity in early modern England by examining the ways Catholics from the reign of Mary Tudor to the early 17th century contested and shaped ...
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This book interrogates standard narratives about national identity in early modern England by examining the ways Catholics from the reign of Mary Tudor to the early 17th century contested and shaped discourses of the nation, patriotism, and Englishness. Accused by their opponents of espousing an alien religion, one orchestrated from Rome and sustained by Spain, English Catholics fought back by developing their own self-representations that emphasized how the Catholic faith was an ancient and integral part of true Englishness. After the accession of the Protestant Elizabeth, the Catholic imagining of England was mainly the project of the exiles who had left their homeland in search of religious toleration and foreign assistance. English Catholics constructed narratives of their own religious heritage and identity, however, not only in response to Protestant polemic but also as part of intra-Catholic rivalries that pitted Marian clergy against seminary priests, secular priests against Jesuits, and exiled English Catholics against their co-religionists from other parts of Britain and Ireland. Drawing on recent reassessments of English Catholicism this study foregrounds the faultlines within and between the various Catholic communities of the Atlantic archipelago. The book examines a range of genres, texts, and documents both in print and manuscript, including ecclesiastical histories, polemical treatises, antiquarian tracts, and correspondence. The argument weaves together a rich historical narrative of people, events, and texts while also offering contextualized close readings of specific works by under-studied figures like Edmund Campion, Robert Persons, Thomas Stapleton, and Richard Verstegan.Less

Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland

Christopher Highley

Published in print: 2008-07-10

This book interrogates standard narratives about national identity in early modern England by examining the ways Catholics from the reign of Mary Tudor to the early 17th century contested and shaped discourses of the nation, patriotism, and Englishness. Accused by their opponents of espousing an alien religion, one orchestrated from Rome and sustained by Spain, English Catholics fought back by developing their own self-representations that emphasized how the Catholic faith was an ancient and integral part of true Englishness. After the accession of the Protestant Elizabeth, the Catholic imagining of England was mainly the project of the exiles who had left their homeland in search of religious toleration and foreign assistance. English Catholics constructed narratives of their own religious heritage and identity, however, not only in response to Protestant polemic but also as part of intra-Catholic rivalries that pitted Marian clergy against seminary priests, secular priests against Jesuits, and exiled English Catholics against their co-religionists from other parts of Britain and Ireland. Drawing on recent reassessments of English Catholicism this study foregrounds the faultlines within and between the various Catholic communities of the Atlantic archipelago. The book examines a range of genres, texts, and documents both in print and manuscript, including ecclesiastical histories, polemical treatises, antiquarian tracts, and correspondence. The argument weaves together a rich historical narrative of people, events, and texts while also offering contextualized close readings of specific works by under-studied figures like Edmund Campion, Robert Persons, Thomas Stapleton, and Richard Verstegan.

In what tense should we refer to the dead? The question has long been asked, from Cicero to Julian Barnes. Answering it is partly a matter of grammar and stylistic convention. But the hesitation, ...
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In what tense should we refer to the dead? The question has long been asked, from Cicero to Julian Barnes. Answering it is partly a matter of grammar and stylistic convention. But the hesitation, annoyance, even distress that can be caused by the ‘wrong’ tense suggests that more may be at stake: our very relation to the dead. This book investigates how tenses were used in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France (especially in French but also in Latin) to refer to dead friends, lovers, family members, enemies, colleagues, writers, officials, monarchs—and to those who had died long before, whether Christ, the saints, or the ancient Greeks and Romans who posthumously filled the minds of Renaissance humanists. Did tenses refer to the dead in ways that contributed to granting them differing degrees of presence (and absence)? Did tenses communicate dimensions of posthumous presence (and absence) that partly eluded more concept-based affirmations? The investigation ranges from funerary and devotional writing to Eucharistic theology, from poetry to humanist paratexts, from Rabelais’s prose fiction to Montaigne’s Essais. Primarily a work of literary and cultural history, it also draws on early modern grammatical thought and on modern linguistics (with its concept of aspect and its questioning of ‘tense’), while arguing that neither can fully explain the phenomena studied. The book briefly compares early modern usage with tendencies in modern French and English in the West, asking whether changes in belief about posthumous survival have been accompanied by changes in tense-use.Less

Death and Tenses : Posthumous Presence in Early Modern France

Neil Kenny

Published in print: 2015-12-01

In what tense should we refer to the dead? The question has long been asked, from Cicero to Julian Barnes. Answering it is partly a matter of grammar and stylistic convention. But the hesitation, annoyance, even distress that can be caused by the ‘wrong’ tense suggests that more may be at stake: our very relation to the dead. This book investigates how tenses were used in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France (especially in French but also in Latin) to refer to dead friends, lovers, family members, enemies, colleagues, writers, officials, monarchs—and to those who had died long before, whether Christ, the saints, or the ancient Greeks and Romans who posthumously filled the minds of Renaissance humanists. Did tenses refer to the dead in ways that contributed to granting them differing degrees of presence (and absence)? Did tenses communicate dimensions of posthumous presence (and absence) that partly eluded more concept-based affirmations? The investigation ranges from funerary and devotional writing to Eucharistic theology, from poetry to humanist paratexts, from Rabelais’s prose fiction to Montaigne’s Essais. Primarily a work of literary and cultural history, it also draws on early modern grammatical thought and on modern linguistics (with its concept of aspect and its questioning of ‘tense’), while arguing that neither can fully explain the phenomena studied. The book briefly compares early modern usage with tendencies in modern French and English in the West, asking whether changes in belief about posthumous survival have been accompanied by changes in tense-use.

This book examines the glossing of a variety of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century texts by authors including Lydgate, Douglas, Chaloner, Baldwin, Bullein, Harington, and Nashe. It is concerned ...
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This book examines the glossing of a variety of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century texts by authors including Lydgate, Douglas, Chaloner, Baldwin, Bullein, Harington, and Nashe. It is concerned particularly with the use of glosses as a means of authorial reflection on the writing process, and with the emergence of the gloss as a self-consciously literary mode. One of the main questions it addresses is to what extent the advent of print affects glossing practices. To this end, it traces the transmission of a number of glossed texts in both manuscript and print, but also examines glossing that is integral to texts written with print production in mind. With the latter, it focuses particularly on a little-remarked-upon but surprisingly common category of gloss: glossing that is ostentatiously playful, diverting rather than directing its readers. Setting this in the context of emerging print conventions and concerns about the stability of print, it argues that—like self-glossing in manuscript—such diverting glosses shape as well as reflect contemporary ideas of authorship and authority, and are thus genuinely experimental. The book reads across medieval-renaissance and manuscript-print boundaries in order to trace the emergence of the gloss as a genre and the way in which theories of authorship are affected by the material processes of writing and transmission.Less

Jane Griffiths

Published in print: 2014-12-11

This book examines the glossing of a variety of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century texts by authors including Lydgate, Douglas, Chaloner, Baldwin, Bullein, Harington, and Nashe. It is concerned particularly with the use of glosses as a means of authorial reflection on the writing process, and with the emergence of the gloss as a self-consciously literary mode. One of the main questions it addresses is to what extent the advent of print affects glossing practices. To this end, it traces the transmission of a number of glossed texts in both manuscript and print, but also examines glossing that is integral to texts written with print production in mind. With the latter, it focuses particularly on a little-remarked-upon but surprisingly common category of gloss: glossing that is ostentatiously playful, diverting rather than directing its readers. Setting this in the context of emerging print conventions and concerns about the stability of print, it argues that—like self-glossing in manuscript—such diverting glosses shape as well as reflect contemporary ideas of authorship and authority, and are thus genuinely experimental. The book reads across medieval-renaissance and manuscript-print boundaries in order to trace the emergence of the gloss as a genre and the way in which theories of authorship are affected by the material processes of writing and transmission.

The Irish book trade has hitherto been viewed as a footnote to the English trade. This book studies Irish bookselling practices, particularly those of Dublin. The study draws on a wealth of material ...
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The Irish book trade has hitherto been viewed as a footnote to the English trade. This book studies Irish bookselling practices, particularly those of Dublin. The study draws on a wealth of material — daybooks, imprints, advertisements, and the books themselves — to build up a detailed picture of the fortunes and practices of Irish bookselling. The English book trade bore heavily on the Irish, especially in the areas of legal restraints and censorship. Interestingly, there are documented instances of book-smuggling to Britain. But the study does not concentrate solely on relations with London: it looks at the market at home, the structure and economic background to the Dublin trade, and at what books were published and for whom. In particular, it examines the significant expansion of the book trade during the 18th century, and surveys imports and exports for the first time.Less

Dublin's Trade in Books 1550–1800 : Lyell Lectures 1986-7

M. Pollard

Published in print: 1990-01-25

The Irish book trade has hitherto been viewed as a footnote to the English trade. This book studies Irish bookselling practices, particularly those of Dublin. The study draws on a wealth of material — daybooks, imprints, advertisements, and the books themselves — to build up a detailed picture of the fortunes and practices of Irish bookselling. The English book trade bore heavily on the Irish, especially in the areas of legal restraints and censorship. Interestingly, there are documented instances of book-smuggling to Britain. But the study does not concentrate solely on relations with London: it looks at the market at home, the structure and economic background to the Dublin trade, and at what books were published and for whom. In particular, it examines the significant expansion of the book trade during the 18th century, and surveys imports and exports for the first time.

This book explores the emergence of antiquarianism in early modern England, from its first flourishing in the mid-Tudor period through to its 17th-century heyday. At this time, a vibrant antiquarian ...
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This book explores the emergence of antiquarianism in early modern England, from its first flourishing in the mid-Tudor period through to its 17th-century heyday. At this time, a vibrant antiquarian culture emerged, which reached beyond scholarly and historical circles, and had a profound influence on the literature and thought of the period. Examining the influences on that development of that culture, the book argues that the origins of English antiquarianism need to be found in the methods of continental (and especially Italian) humanism. It shows that, like the humanists, the early antiquaries had the essentially imaginative aim of resurrecting and recomposing the past ‘in defiance of time’. The antiquaries conceived of themselves as bridging the gap between past and present. At the heart of this book is the argument that the antiquarian project depended on the antiquaries' capacity to restore — in their imagination at least — the fragments of the past. The book also traces these arguments through a range of authors and material, both printed and in manuscript. Chapters advance original readings of important authors such as Leland, Stow, Spenser, Camden, Drayton, and Selden, as well as shedding light on institutions such as the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and reviewing the wide range of activities, interests, and concerns that came under the antiquarian purview. Antiquarianism is thereby shown to be integral to early modern literary and intellectual culture.Less

In Defiance of Time : Antiquarian Writing in Early Modern England

Angus Vine

Published in print: 2010-06-10

This book explores the emergence of antiquarianism in early modern England, from its first flourishing in the mid-Tudor period through to its 17th-century heyday. At this time, a vibrant antiquarian culture emerged, which reached beyond scholarly and historical circles, and had a profound influence on the literature and thought of the period. Examining the influences on that development of that culture, the book argues that the origins of English antiquarianism need to be found in the methods of continental (and especially Italian) humanism. It shows that, like the humanists, the early antiquaries had the essentially imaginative aim of resurrecting and recomposing the past ‘in defiance of time’. The antiquaries conceived of themselves as bridging the gap between past and present. At the heart of this book is the argument that the antiquarian project depended on the antiquaries' capacity to restore — in their imagination at least — the fragments of the past. The book also traces these arguments through a range of authors and material, both printed and in manuscript. Chapters advance original readings of important authors such as Leland, Stow, Spenser, Camden, Drayton, and Selden, as well as shedding light on institutions such as the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and reviewing the wide range of activities, interests, and concerns that came under the antiquarian purview. Antiquarianism is thereby shown to be integral to early modern literary and intellectual culture.

This book presents a history of the literary culture of early modern Scotland (1560–1625), based on extensive study of the literary manuscript. The book breaks new ground in a number of ways. ...
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This book presents a history of the literary culture of early modern Scotland (1560–1625), based on extensive study of the literary manuscript. The book breaks new ground in a number of ways. Firstly, it draws on (relatively) canonical manuscripts, texts, and authors, but following extensive archival research, it also brings to light manuscripts and their literary contents that have rarely, or never, been discussed before. Secondly, the book argues for the importance of three key places of production of such manuscripts: the royal court, burghs and towns, and regional houses (stately homes, but also minor lairdly and non-aristocratic households). This attention to place facilitates a discussion of, respectively, courtly, urban or civic, and regional literary cultures. Much of the methodology that underpins this book stems from bibliographical scholarship and the so-called ‘History of the Book’, and more specifically, from a school of manuscript research that has invigorated early modern English literary criticism over the last few decades. This monograph also intersects with a programme of reassessment of early modern Scottish culture that is currently underway in Scottish studies. Traditional narratives of literary history have often regarded the Reformation of 1560 as heralding a terminal cultural decline, and the Union of Crowns of 1603, with the departure of king and court, was thought to have brought the briefest of renaissances (in the 1580s and 1590s) to an early end. This book purposefully straddles the Union, in order to make possible the rediscovery of Scotland’s refined and sophisticated renaissance culture.Less

The Literary Culture of Early Modern Scotland : Manuscript Production and Transmission, 1560–1625

Sebastiaan Verweij

Published in print: 2016-03-01

This book presents a history of the literary culture of early modern Scotland (1560–1625), based on extensive study of the literary manuscript. The book breaks new ground in a number of ways. Firstly, it draws on (relatively) canonical manuscripts, texts, and authors, but following extensive archival research, it also brings to light manuscripts and their literary contents that have rarely, or never, been discussed before. Secondly, the book argues for the importance of three key places of production of such manuscripts: the royal court, burghs and towns, and regional houses (stately homes, but also minor lairdly and non-aristocratic households). This attention to place facilitates a discussion of, respectively, courtly, urban or civic, and regional literary cultures. Much of the methodology that underpins this book stems from bibliographical scholarship and the so-called ‘History of the Book’, and more specifically, from a school of manuscript research that has invigorated early modern English literary criticism over the last few decades. This monograph also intersects with a programme of reassessment of early modern Scottish culture that is currently underway in Scottish studies. Traditional narratives of literary history have often regarded the Reformation of 1560 as heralding a terminal cultural decline, and the Union of Crowns of 1603, with the departure of king and court, was thought to have brought the briefest of renaissances (in the 1580s and 1590s) to an early end. This book purposefully straddles the Union, in order to make possible the rediscovery of Scotland’s refined and sophisticated renaissance culture.

This book examines the place of literature in the Reformation, considering both how arguments about biblical meaning and literary interpretation influenced the new theology, and how developments in ...
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This book examines the place of literature in the Reformation, considering both how arguments about biblical meaning and literary interpretation influenced the new theology, and how developments in theology in turn influenced literary practices. Part One focuses on Northern Europe, reconsidering the relationship between Renaissance humanism (especially Erasmus) and religious ideas (especially Luther). Parts Two and Three examine Tudor and early Stuart England. Part Two describes the rise of vernacular theology and Protestant culture in relation to fundamental changes in the understanding of the English language. Part Three studies English religious poetry (including Donne, Herbert, and, in an Epilogue, Milton) in the wake of these changes. Bringing together genres and styles of writing that are normally kept apart (poems, sermons, treatises, commentaries), the author offers a re-evaluation of the literary production of this intensely verbal and controversial period.Less

The Literary Culture of the Reformation : Grammar and Grace

Brian Cummings

Published in print: 2002-12-05

This book examines the place of literature in the Reformation, considering both how arguments about biblical meaning and literary interpretation influenced the new theology, and how developments in theology in turn influenced literary practices. Part One focuses on Northern Europe, reconsidering the relationship between Renaissance humanism (especially Erasmus) and religious ideas (especially Luther). Parts Two and Three examine Tudor and early Stuart England. Part Two describes the rise of vernacular theology and Protestant culture in relation to fundamental changes in the understanding of the English language. Part Three studies English religious poetry (including Donne, Herbert, and, in an Epilogue, Milton) in the wake of these changes. Bringing together genres and styles of writing that are normally kept apart (poems, sermons, treatises, commentaries), the author offers a re-evaluation of the literary production of this intensely verbal and controversial period.

This book highlights the importance of the Arminian controversy (1609–19) for the understanding of the literary and intellectual culture of the Dutch Golden Age. Taking into account a wide array of ...
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This book highlights the importance of the Arminian controversy (1609–19) for the understanding of the literary and intellectual culture of the Dutch Golden Age. Taking into account a wide array of sources, ranging from theological and juridical treatises, to pamphlets, plays, and libel poetry, it offers not only a deeper contextualization of some of the most canonical works of the period, such as the works of Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert, Hugo Grotius, and Joost van den Vondel, but also invites the reader to rethink the way we view the relation between literature and theology in early modern culture. The book argues that the controversy over divine predestination acted as a catalyst for literary and cultural change, tracing the impact of disputed ideas on grace and will, religious toleration and the rights of the civil magistrate in satirical literature, poetry, and plays. Conversely, it reads the theological and political works as literature, by examining the rhetoric and tropes of religious controversy. Analysing the way in which literature shapes the political and religious imaginary, it allows us to look beyond the history of doctrine, or the history of political rights, to include the emotive and imaginative power of narrative, myth, and metaphor.Less

The Literature of the Arminian Controversy : Religion, Politics and the Stage in the Dutch Republic

Freya Sierhuis

Published in print: 2015-12-01

This book highlights the importance of the Arminian controversy (1609–19) for the understanding of the literary and intellectual culture of the Dutch Golden Age. Taking into account a wide array of sources, ranging from theological and juridical treatises, to pamphlets, plays, and libel poetry, it offers not only a deeper contextualization of some of the most canonical works of the period, such as the works of Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert, Hugo Grotius, and Joost van den Vondel, but also invites the reader to rethink the way we view the relation between literature and theology in early modern culture. The book argues that the controversy over divine predestination acted as a catalyst for literary and cultural change, tracing the impact of disputed ideas on grace and will, religious toleration and the rights of the civil magistrate in satirical literature, poetry, and plays. Conversely, it reads the theological and political works as literature, by examining the rhetoric and tropes of religious controversy. Analysing the way in which literature shapes the political and religious imaginary, it allows us to look beyond the history of doctrine, or the history of political rights, to include the emotive and imaginative power of narrative, myth, and metaphor.

Mediatrix is about four interrelated communities in which politically influential women, or “mediatrixes,” played central roles, and the literary work they produced. The first focuses on Mary Sidney ...
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Mediatrix is about four interrelated communities in which politically influential women, or “mediatrixes,” played central roles, and the literary work they produced. The first focuses on Mary Sidney Herbert, the Sidney circle and The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia; the second on Margaret Hoby’s community of readers in recusant Yorkshire and the godly texts this reading kept alive; the third on the circle surrounding Lucy Harrington Russell, Countess of Bedford, and John Donne’s verse letters, occasional poems and Holy Sonnets; and the fourth on Mary Wroth, the Sidney-Herbert alliance, and The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania. While many of these women are familiar figures in feminist literary history, Mediatrix looks at their contributions less in terms of their gender or seemingly discrete roles as writers, patrons, or readers, than in terms of their religious and political affiliations and commitments. The four communities were related to each other not only by birth and marriage, but by their engagement with the cause loosely identified as militant Protestantism, invested in a limited monarchy, and advanced in no small part by what has been called “practically active” humanism, particularly the production and circulation of literary texts. By looking at the work these communities produced, as well as the places in and the means by which they did so, I argue not only that women played a central role in the production of some of England’s most important literary texts, but that the work they produced was an essential part of the political, as well as the literary, culture of early modern England.Less

Mediatrix : Women, Politics, and Literary Production in Early Modern England

Julie Crawford

Published in print: 2014-05-29

Mediatrix is about four interrelated communities in which politically influential women, or “mediatrixes,” played central roles, and the literary work they produced. The first focuses on Mary Sidney Herbert, the Sidney circle and The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia; the second on Margaret Hoby’s community of readers in recusant Yorkshire and the godly texts this reading kept alive; the third on the circle surrounding Lucy Harrington Russell, Countess of Bedford, and John Donne’s verse letters, occasional poems and Holy Sonnets; and the fourth on Mary Wroth, the Sidney-Herbert alliance, and The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania. While many of these women are familiar figures in feminist literary history, Mediatrix looks at their contributions less in terms of their gender or seemingly discrete roles as writers, patrons, or readers, than in terms of their religious and political affiliations and commitments. The four communities were related to each other not only by birth and marriage, but by their engagement with the cause loosely identified as militant Protestantism, invested in a limited monarchy, and advanced in no small part by what has been called “practically active” humanism, particularly the production and circulation of literary texts. By looking at the work these communities produced, as well as the places in and the means by which they did so, I argue not only that women played a central role in the production of some of England’s most important literary texts, but that the work they produced was an essential part of the political, as well as the literary, culture of early modern England.

What did most people read? Where did they get it? Where did it come from? What were its uses in its readers' lives? How was it produced and distributed? What were its relations to the wider world of ...
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What did most people read? Where did they get it? Where did it come from? What were its uses in its readers' lives? How was it produced and distributed? What were its relations to the wider world of print culture? How did it develop over time? These questions are central to this series of books devoted to the exploration of popular print culture in English from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present. Between the beginning of the sixteenth century and the later seventeenth, governments, institutions, and individuals learned to use inexpensively-produced printed texts to inform, entertain, and persuade. Cheap print quickly became rooted in British and Irish culture, both elite and popular. This book examines the developing role of popular printed texts in the first two centuries of print in Britain and Ireland. Its forty-five chapters (with sixty-six illustrations) look at a broad range of historical and social contexts, at comparisons with other European countries, at the variety of content and themes in cheap printed texts, the forms and genres that developed with and were used by cheap print, and concludes with a series of case studies exploring the role of print in particular years. The book takes none of these terms — popular, print, culture — for granted, but interrogates each of them with a rich, contoured picture of the relationship between a popular readership, the materiality of books, the economy of the book trade, and political and cultural history.Less

The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture : Volume One: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660

Published in print: 2011-04-21

What did most people read? Where did they get it? Where did it come from? What were its uses in its readers' lives? How was it produced and distributed? What were its relations to the wider world of print culture? How did it develop over time? These questions are central to this series of books devoted to the exploration of popular print culture in English from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the present. Between the beginning of the sixteenth century and the later seventeenth, governments, institutions, and individuals learned to use inexpensively-produced printed texts to inform, entertain, and persuade. Cheap print quickly became rooted in British and Irish culture, both elite and popular. This book examines the developing role of popular printed texts in the first two centuries of print in Britain and Ireland. Its forty-five chapters (with sixty-six illustrations) look at a broad range of historical and social contexts, at comparisons with other European countries, at the variety of content and themes in cheap printed texts, the forms and genres that developed with and were used by cheap print, and concludes with a series of case studies exploring the role of print in particular years. The book takes none of these terms — popular, print, culture — for granted, but interrogates each of them with a rich, contoured picture of the relationship between a popular readership, the materiality of books, the economy of the book trade, and political and cultural history.